My Sister's Keeper (Review)

Nick Cassavetes’ three-hankie weepy lurches during its music-video sequences and gratuitous voice-over narration from members of the Fitzgerald family as they struggle with their terminally ill daughter Kate (well played by Sofia Vassilieva). Yet, in spite of some of its less-than-elegant editorial decisions, My Sister's Keeper is full of terrific performances.

Parents Sara (Cameron Diaz in the best performance of her career to date) and Brian (played by the ever-dependable Jason Patric) made an ethically challenging decision when they chose to conceive a second daughter, Anna (Abigail Breslin), as a genetically engineered resource to physically help keep leukemia-stricken Kate alive.

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At 11, Anna decides that she wants to be legally exonerated from her bodily responsibilities to Kate and seeks medical emancipation with the aid of Campbell Alexander (Alec Baldwin), a successful ambulance-chasing attorney. A court battle, overseen by an especially perceptive Judge De Salvo (Joan Cusack), looms while Kate pursues romance with a cancer-suffering patient named Taylor (Thomas Dekker). The crux of the drama comes down to Sara’s ability as a mother to see beyond her involuntary urge to fight like a martyr for the life of a daughter whose pain and suffering must eventually come to an end.

My Sister's Keeper manages to encompass the complexities of a disjointed family acting with best intentions in a medical calamity that necessarily involves a battery of outside influences. If only Cassavetes could have trusted the film enough to leave out the distancing montage music sequences and beside-the-point narration, he could have approached a perfect drama. Grade: B

Opens June 26. Check out theaters and show times, see the film's trailer and find nearby bars and restaurants here.